


cold

by ERNest



Category: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Related Fandoms, Wonderland: A New Alice - Murphy/Boyd/Wildhorn
Genre: Excessive Use of Parentheses, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Tree Climbing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-06
Updated: 2013-06-07
Packaged: 2017-12-14 02:50:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/831845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ERNest/pseuds/ERNest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Morris digs a grave</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He digs a grave. The earth is cold and hard and stubborn (like her, he wants to say (but not like her, she was flame and quicksand and enough rope to hang yourself with)). So it takes a long time to make something six feet long (it should be seven, with accessories (it hardly matters; there is no body)). Eventually the task is complete. The stars have migrated on their path across the sky (she used to do that, tilt the planet on its axis) but there are still enough hours to call this night. No one is around to see him build a memorial for his friend (for his victim (but she victimized him too)) by taking something away. So only no one will watch him place first one foot, then another, into the shallow trench he just created (it feels like warfare, the way his intestines rebel against his duodenum). How do the stars look closer when he is really further into the ground? It must be the way right angles form a careful cage around his perspective. The feel of the ground that drags him to his knees is like magnets (like a cold wind in August (and a nice little detachable head)). He rests his face on the dirt and welcomes the prickling particles. If he closes his eyes (there’s nothing worth seeing) he can pretend that it’s her soft cheek, wherever she is. She is somewhere, she must be _because_ (he needs her) there is no body. He stands and brushes himself off, and climbs from despair. And then he keeps climbing, climbs the tree where she used to think he didn’t know she spent her nights. He watches the sky lighten by degrees and blows a kiss for her to catch.


	2. Chapter 2

He has a knot in his back when he wakes up, and a moment later realizes that he is up a tree. No, not a tree – hers. He surveys the table stretched out below him and sees what she must have seen countless mornings. Even after she had a home for herself, he sometimes found her up here, just singing at the moon, but it always felt wrong to see her in such an innocent state of happiness, so he never told her. His gaze falls past the rectangle covered in a tablecloth and lands on a different rectangle hollowed out of the earth. He remembers why he is up a tree and the hollow ache that even hours of digging could not erase. But even though it’s completely ridiculous, he feels as though she was protecting him through the night. She tells him to stop mourning her, so he climbs down and starts to dig again, this time to fill in something that has been emptied and then forgotten.


End file.
